Holidays, baby, and a lot of rambling

Man, holidays are crazy! I love them, though. We had a blast with both families and I'm pretty sad its already over :(

My beautiful cousin had her beautiful daughter, healthy and perfect, as planned- on December 17th. Since I barely ever get to my hometown, I was given the privilege of holding the baby for the WHOLE TIME we were celebrating Christmas at my cousin's house. It wasn't long, since she was recovering from a c-section, but for that two hours, I was in baby-love heaven. Heaven! It definitely made my womb throb with longing, but I also felt pangs of fear. This is the first time I've held a newborn since we began seriously discussing/researching having children and my perspective into babies has changed. I still love them and want some for myself, but holding that little girl and envisioning her as my own brought a wave of "holy shit if I have one of these, I actually have to take care of it, keep it alive, and not ruin its life. whoa!" and for a moment, I wanted to hand her back and run the other way. I didn't, but the point is- reality hit me like a ton of bricks.

I also had the chance to have a wonderful discussion with my cousin about babies. Pru and I got stuck upstate while NYC was hit with a rather ridiculous amount of snow, so we took that opportunity to sneak more baby oogling time. While my cuz folded a whole lot of baby/toddler laundry, she started asking us about having our own kiddos (she insists we have them immediately so her kids have cousins their age, similar to all of the cousins our age). As much as I want to grant her wish, its just not realistic right now.

After joking about that for a while, she starting asking us the more serious questions- egg? sperm? uterus?- you know, the tricky stuff lesbians have to navigate in order to spawn. She was genuinely interested and obviously wanted to show her support. She listened as I explained just about everything I understand regarding lesbian conception and asked more questions. It was great! I totally didn't feel like she was being nosy/fascinated with lesbo reproduction. By the end, I felt so...grateful. It was wonderful to learn that a family member is so supportive and interested. My family has historically been pretty lame in the way of acceptance, but have made unbelievable leaps and bounds towards changing.

Furthermore, my cousin is the only family member I have who is non-white. My Aunt got knocked up by a Mexican soldier when she was twenty(ish) and it was NOT well received by the family. My cousin was basically this colored bastard child no one wanted...until she was born and then, well, its hard not to love a chubby cutesy ball of happy. With time, everyone chilled out and my cousin was raised with much love. However, her halfy status was literally NEVER mentioned. I didn't even find out until I was much older (sidenote: how ignorant am I to not notice my cousin doesn't look totally white? I still dont really see it and it absolutely cracks Pru up. The power of denial, folks). I don't even remember how I found out.

Anyway, this whole race experience/discovery has given me basically the only insight I have into how my family receives "minorities." This, naturally, has me mildly panicked about how they'll respond to our future half-Korean children. Even if they had a tantrum and disowned me, I'm still having halfies, but it will make things....kinda shitty. My cousin and sister reassured me that no one will care, but what exactly does "care" mean? Not hate? Tolerate? Celebrate? Ignore?  There's a lot of gray area within the phrase "they won't care." Hmm. I will eventually have more conversations about this, but for now I'm just trying to get a sense of how my more accepting family members feel about it.

Well this is long-winded. I'm done.

Except...congratulations to the new babies and BFPs out there in the blogosphere! I'm so happy for you gals!!!!